A very much appreciated crop

A last minute trip back to the UK for the weekend just happened to coincide with the Bromsgrove crop - totally unplanned but totally appreciated :-)

I've commented before that I'm a lone scrapper - my blog or LOAD being the only sort of scrapbooking with others that I participate in - so when I get the chance to go along and be with others, it's a lot of fun to do things in a different way.

I caught up with the wonderful Bromsgrove crowd as well as long time school friend, Sarah (who brought along a gazillion kilos of Cadbury's for me as a *little* present!) and of course, card maker extraordinaire, Deb.

I had a wonderful, if not terribly productive day. I chatted a lot and looked over people's shoulders to see what gorgeous stuff they were working on. It's always so inspiring to see how others create and what styles they have developed since I last saw them.

Thankfully, Deb has recently started to bring along challenges to the crop and without those, I would probably not have made anything at all (although I would still have been happy to be there!)

First off, I participated in her, now regular, card class. Such a lovely card. Such lovely colours. Such great stamps. Such a great teacher - I must have asked a hundred questions about techniques etc and Deb is just about as patient as can be.

Here's my sweet card.

Unfortunately, I messed up the sentiment a little bit - not really central and a line of ink that shouldn't be there. But the card itself is so lovely that I don't think the recipient will notice! Thanks Deb for a card I'm really proud of.

Next up came a sketch from Sketchy Thursdays (sketch 6.02). I liked the layers and the strip journalling and felt it was quite *me*.

I broke into my glorious Curio collection (BasicGrey of course) and layered up papers and embellishments for this Hipstamatic photo layout. However, the title is totally lame and I need to find a new one and redo it ("Turm" means "tower" in German as I didn't have the right letters).

I also think I need to redo the journalling as again, it's also a bit lame and I made several handwriting mistakes!

Next challenge was to make up a card from the scraps of the first layout and base it on a Cardabilities sketch.

Cards are still proving challenging for me but I am determined to keep going because I have become too stingy to pay out so much money for second rate shop bought cards when I have everything I need to make them right here in my room. Sketches really help me with this as they tend to be simple but help me find the right location for items on this small scale.

I spent ages borrowing Deb's TH rosette dies to make a whole load of flowers - neeeed that die!

And then lastly, there was a scraplift challenge using this great design by Theresa (one of the founders of Scrapbooker's Anonymous).

Her design featuring multiple strips below the photo was one that was instantly appealing and I decided to just tear and ink some October Afternoon papers to produce this simple take on her design.

Two layouts and two cards plus a whole load of chatty fun. All adds up to one great day!

Thanks again to everyone - you never fail to make me feel welcome even though I only manage to go along once a year or so! And thanks to Libby for letting me raid her precious Thickers as well as other stash to supplement my single bag that I brought along.

Oh yes, and I won not one but two raffle prizes! It was obviously my lucky day.

Hope to see you all again soon...